


Go On Rising

by xraelynn



Category: The X-Files, The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst, Character Death, Episode: s03e17 Pusher, Episode: s03e23 Wetwired, Episode: s04e23 Demons, Episode: s07e01 Sixth Extinction, Movie: Fight The Future, Post-Episode: s02e19 Død Kalm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-22 18:37:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13770117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xraelynn/pseuds/xraelynn
Summary: "I know that they can save you if you just hold on." -Scully to Mulder, "The Sixth Extinction"What if, instead of asking him to hold on, she had told him to let go?





	Go On Rising

**Author's Note:**

> "to go into the dark and to go on and remember"  
> -from "Fox Sleep," by W.S. Merwin

"Mulder, no," she whispers, crumpling under the horror of it, but his head is too full with the chanting to hear her: Pull the trigger, his voice hisses, somehow his own even when the thoughts aren't. Pull the trigger, my God, he would never do such a thing; he sees the thought reflected in her eyes as she stares at him, her gaze holding him hard.

If he can be willed to do this thing, why can't he be willed to stop?

His arm twists and trembles, the fight going out of it as the chant intensifies, his grip solidifying around the butt of the weapon. Her eyes never leave him as they rise from their chairs, the thing fixed in their minds, the chant unyielding. Pull the trigger. Pull the trigger, Mulder.

Without sweat, without blinking, it happens in the opposite of slow motion: Pull the trigger, his voice demands, wanting it and wanting it to be over — and he obeys, desperate to stop, and nothing flashes before his eyes but darkness —

* * *

The ship has grown too ancient now even to cradle them with its rocking motion; instead it settles uncomfortably into the waves as if testing the depth of its final plunge. It isn't fair, he thinks again, plaintively this time, as if hoping someone will hear him.

He is so tired, cataloguing all the times he has been this close to it, all the violence and ferocity it took to bring him back. He has never realized that it might be this easy, this effortless, to let Scully close his eyes for him, to sink back into the ocean and let it wash him away.

It's not our time, he thinks, but less fiercely now, wanting it less, and he feels her small hand brush quietly across his face. Bon voyage, he thinks. Farewell.

* * *

He senses her there behind him and then he doesn't; she flickers and fades like a hologram, the hum of her voice replaced by buzzing sound effects that howl insistently inside of him. My baby. You're a little spy —

He needs to feel it pressed against his neck, needs to let it rest there as if it belongs in the crook of his chin, poised beside him, wanting to enter.

"Don't try to stop me," he mumbles.

"Please, Mulder," she says, and he takes the words and shakes them loose from his mind, willing himself to forget them, forget her, forget everything at all.

I'm afraid, Fox. I'm afraid, he thinks, seeing it return in flashes, seeing it surge and recede until his finger twitches and he sees nothing in the darkness.

* * *

They have made several days' study of avoiding each other's eyes, their own feelings as tender and raw as the fading scars of their frostbitten skin. What has occurred in the tundra does not — cannot — change what had once transpired between them; it hangs in the air and settles in their throats, waiting to be spoken.

He feels bare and defeated, like someone has excavated his insides and scooped them out of his chest, the heavy feeling settling there where his lungs used to be.

He knows he has brought her back only to send her away. "Get as far away from me as you can," he commands, willing his voice to harden and turn cold as if he still hasn't left the ice.

She hesitates, her hand hovering as if she wants to touch him, and he is torn between wanting her and wanting to save her, knowing that to do both is inconceivable. For a second he falters, his chest aching, but then he turns from her, walking away just to keep from turning back. He has already made up his mind.

* * *

"Let me do that," he tells the coroner, certain the man can hear his heart curling inside out and crawling into his throat, refusing to beat. He reaches for the blind and the thing strikes him in the chest, a sudden assault, the floor swirling dizzily beneath him. He is acutely aware, suddenly, of his body, tilting helplessly to the side, while the coroner reaches to steady him with a latex-gloved hand.

"Is that a positive ID?" he asks, sympathetic but distant, the mental checklist plain on his face while Mulder gasps for air and finds nothing, a vacuum, his breath consumed with her body and the way her red hair arranges itself around the bullet lodged within her. When he closes his eyes he can see her there, still; he will stare through that window for the rest of his life.

He nods at the expectant coroner, the air convulsing in and out of his lungs, hoping for it to feel different.

The coroner draws the blinds. Behind them, she does not move.

* * *

"I know you can hear me," she says, and he knows it too, her voice swelling inside his mind that is crammed with a thousand other voices pulsating inside.

He knows it even though he can only stare through her, his eyes vacant while his mind is full, the voices crawling and clamoring around him. He knows that she has not come to save him. He thinks about her technique with a defibrillator, the way she has siphoned blood from his veins, felt his pulse, fastened tourniquets, pressed her hand to his forehead and to his bleeding chest. She has asked him to hold on and he struggles to do it, wanting to spare her that anguish, that desperation.

She looks at him and he knows there is nothing left for him to fight, nothing more she can do.

"You can go now. You can let go," she whispers finally, her voice raw as though it's been skinned, broken and full of tears.

Let go, he thinks, and her words echo and fade. Let go, and let go, and let go.

**Author's Note:**

> "after the goodbyes after the faces and the light  
> after the recognitions and the touching and tears  
> those voices go on rising if I knew I would hear  
> in the last dark that singing I know how I would listen"  
> -from "Night Singing," by W.S. Merwin


End file.
